I stopped and took another sip of tea. Ross was sitting on the little table, his legs swinging. ‘So I gather he wasn’t absolutely objectionable at this point?’
‘No, no. We just didn’t have much in common really, and if it hadn’t been for Tilly we’d have gone our separate ways. But we got on well enough and he wanted to be there for his child, and I wasn’t sure how I’d manage on my own anyway, so we thought we’d stay together at least for that first year. But…’ I stopped again. This was where everything got hazy and confused. ‘As soon as she was born, he changed. He wanted to know where I was all the time. He tracked me, he even had me followed. And when I was at home he acted very weird.’
‘Weird? How?’
I shook my head. There weren’t the words to explain that expression I’d see sometimes on David’s face, or the random behaviour. ‘He even tried to convince me to take medication: sedatives or something. He said they would help me sleep. I took about three but they made me feel woozy and odd, so I pretended to take them and threw them down the toilet.’ I smiled at that memory, it had been one of the few moments of clarity I’d had and I’d felt so smug at the knowledge that I’d got one up on David.
‘Couldn’t you go to your parents?’ Ross asked. His mug was suspended in mid-air, wobbling about with some spillage, unnoticed.
‘Mum was going to come over when Tilly was born, but Tils was early so she had to reschedule and rebook her flight. I tried to speak to her once or twice, but…’ I trailed off again. That memory wasn’t good. ‘David had clearly got to her. I could tell from her voice that she’d swallowed all the lies about me and she was trying to question me to find out what was going on, and he’d always listen in. If he thought I was telling her too much, he’d take the phone or the laptop away from me. And they’re in Australia, it wasn’t as though I could just pop round.’
‘It sounds dreadful.’ Ross seemed to be struggling to keep inflection out of his voice.
‘I don’t need saving,’ I reminded him sternly.
‘No, no. I realise that. It’s all in your past anyway. Except for that message.’ Ross took a quick swig of his tea, looked at it, made a face and then took another. From outside came the hoarse arguing of a pair of crows, shouting to one another from opposing trees and I shivered again. Part of me wanted to confess to thinking that I’d seen David hanging around, but I just couldn’t because it made me sound… yes, paranoid. Why would David de Winter have been standing in a village miles from anywhere? I’d been mistaken, my constant levels of high alert were making me see things, and I didn’t want Ross to think I had… problems. A memory wavered, broken edges of thought coming together like mending a shattered plate; I’d tried to explain how it was to the police, hadn’t I? When I’d first realised what was going on? Had I? Or was that something I had intended to do? Lack of sleep and new motherhood made it hard to distinguish the real from the intention.
‘Every so often David likes to remind me of his existence by texting or ringing me. I told you he changes numbers all the time but I’m worried that it might be something to do with Tilly, so I always answer calls and check my texts, so he knows he’s getting through to me.’
‘And that’s all he says? That he wants to see his daughter?’
I thought. ‘Usually he just asks if she’s all right or where we are. It’s just that it manages to sound sosinister, like he’s implying we mightnotbe all right.’
‘I can see how that might be?—’
‘No, youcan’t,’ I found myself snapping. ‘The man put a tracker on me so he’d know whenever I left the house. He had mefollowedfor fuck’s sake! I think… I think he was putting something in my food too, some kind of sedative so I couldn’t think straight. Do you know what that does to your self-confidence? That feeling that there’s always someone behind you, somewhere, watching and noting what you do, and you’re looking around in a crowd and it could be anybody? Being scared to sleep at night just in case you wake up and the cot’s empty and he’s gone and taken the baby with him!’
In all the foggy, distant memory that emotion still stood out. The horror of opening my eyes and seeing David standing holding Tilly, whispering to her about taking her somewhere – that had been the image that had set my resolution to run.
‘You’re right, I can’t know, of course I can’t. You must have been terrified.’ Ross put his cup down.
‘I was. So I waited one day for David to go out, then I packed a rucksack with a few things and I took Tilly and we ran.’
‘But you took your phone.’
‘I need it.’
‘And you weren’t worried that he might be tracking it? That it might have some kind of program on it that showed him where you were?’
I looked down at the floor. ‘We kept moving. Even if he was tracking us, he’d never have found us, we didn’t stay anywhere long enough. And when we first came to York, I put the phone in a bag and hid it in the back of a church hall for three days. You can see the door from the hostel, so I kept an eye on it to see if he turned up, or if he sent anyone to look for me there. He didn’t.’ Ross was shaking his head. ‘Sounds like a spy thriller,’ he said. ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier…thing. Very enterprising of you.’
‘Someone must have given me the idea but I can’t remember who. Tilly and I were just running, blindly, all the time and I don’t remember half of what we did.’ I drank more tea.
‘And so you came to York.’ Ross was looking at me with an assessing kind of look, as though he were measuring me for a new coat.
‘I’d come here on holiday with Mum and Dad when I was about fourteen. I knew I liked the place and it was a good long way away from London, so I pitched up here and…’ I realised that I really couldn’t remember exactly how I’d got the place in the hostel. ‘I went to the local Women’s Aid and told them I was fleeing domestic abuse. They found me a room, and here I am.’
‘And you’re safe now. At least, you feel safe now, until your ex reminds you of his existence.’
‘Pretty much. I’m still notentirelycertain that he’s not tracking my phone but I can’t afford another one, and he’s not put in an appearance yet. Mind you, if he turns up at the hostel he’ll have to fight his way through Don and Tony’s cloud of weed smoke and them asking his opinions of System of a Down lyrics. I’d have plenty of time to get away and that’s before Tia kneecaps him. We watch out for each other in the hostel.’
There was a momentary pause. Ross seemed to be thinking. ‘Is he a danger to you or Tilly?’ he asked eventually. ‘Would he hurt either of you?’
It was a strange question. Usually people only had to hear how I’d been stalked and tracked and relentlessly controlled and they were helping me. ‘You do know that stalkers sometimes kill the person they’ve been stalking?’ I asked, sounding more abrupt than I’d meant to because his question had felt like an insult.
‘I do know that. The thwarted lover, the “if I can’t have you, nobody can” type. I told you, I’ve had alotof therapy and it included reading many books about damaging behaviour.’ Ross looked directly at me now. Apart from the fact that he’d bitten his lip again, he looked far more the person he had been when he’d been talking to his construction team: far more in charge and intelligent. ‘Which is why I’m asking. Do you feel that he will hurt you or your daughter if he finds you?’
There it was again, that mud in my head that stuck all my thoughts together and made it impossible to tease them apart. As though all my memories were glue and I was looking at them through a grubby window. ‘I… I’m not sure,’ I said slowly. There was a fizz of adrenaline in my blood at the thought. ‘He hadn’t hurt me before, not physically. It’s more mental pain he causes.’
